The West Brunswick Community Garden in Dunstan Reserve (above) was established in 1995 and has provided residents with a place to meet and somewhere to grow food ever since.Unfortunate recent troubles led council to seek a new management group to run the garden. They backed a proposal from volunteer resident group Coburg Community Gardening that aims to revitalise the garden and open it to more residents as a welcoming, lively community hub. Plans include a mix of communal/shared gardening and personal plots and improved facilities where locals can meet, learn and share. If you’re interested in the details of the proposal, you can read it here.

The garden has an exciting future but it obviously needs people and that’s where you come in.

Join your fellow Morelanders at a public get-together to find out more about the future of the garden and how you can be involved. Come down and chat, check out the plans and join the fun.

A while ago I posted about the Growing Abundance project in Castlemaine, and said it should be happening here… well now it is!!!

A fantastic design researcher Juliette Anich, is the founder of Sharing Abundance, you can register volunteer with mapping or caring for fruit trees in Brunswick or help out at harvest time and help share the rewards equitably. If you have or know of a neglected fruit tree you can have it listed and cared for!

Juliette is also part of a environmental activist collective The Inevedible Garden (sorry I missed the talk!)

The Real Dirt on CERES

Friday, March 16th, 2012 at 1:31 pm

What’s the worst thing that can happen to an environment park that educates kids and grows food? A contamination scare that breaks in the city’s most trusted paper.

Appearing on page three of The Sunday Age, March 5th edition, just the week before CERES Organic Farm was given the all clear by Moreland Council and the EPA, a feature article reported, “produce grown at CERES banned from sale” because of lead contamination. The timing of Steve Holland’s article could not have been worse or more mischievous.

If The Sunday Age had bothered to check their story, the real but far less newsworthy story would have revealed that Moreland Council and EPA testing had found five privately leased community garden plots with lead levels slightly over ANZFSC limits and that produce from CERES Organic Farm had never been contaminated or banned from sale. Never let the facts get in the way of a good story they say.

When I read the article, including a quote from CERES chairperson, Robert Larocca, which seemed to back up the story, my first thoughts were, “That’s not right and why would Robert confirm it?”

And then I found out how some journalists work and it all became clear. At the time of the interview in January the final Moreland Council test results hadn’t come out but Steve Holland obtained a leaked version of the preliminary results. The document had the test results but not the locations of the tests. Wrongly assuming the results referred to the CERES Organic Farm instead of the community garden plots, Holland used the report to ask Robert Larocca what he would say to people who could have eaten contaminated CERES produce? Larocca’s reply was, “It is unfortunate it has happened and we are sorry for that. A very small number of people will have purchased that [contaminated food], including myself.” It was an honest answer to a hypothetical question but Holland used the quote make it seem like CERES had actually been selling contaminated produce without ever checking his story was correct.

Two months passed before the article was finally published. It would have only taken a simple phone call to discover that Council and EPA test results had cleared produce sold at CERES and isolated the problem to five 4x4m community garden plots not accessible to the general public. But no phone call was made, the story went to print and all hell broke loose.

I’ve been feeling sick about this for the last fortnight. I used to trust The Age. I read it every day, but now I feel like CERES’ good name has been destroyed by sloppy journalism and a paper eager for a controversial story. Two weeks later and it’s all old news; Moreland Council and the EPA came out with their test results clearing CERES Organic Farm, new articles have been written with the facts but fear is a powerful motivator and people are turning away from CERES. The damage has been done.

The outcome has been immediate for CERES; Fair Food orders are down, the Market is quiet. We are reducing what we buy from the 50 plus Victorian farmers and processors who depend on us for their income. Our packers and drivers are losing shifts and CERES will need to take money away from environmental education programs to cover the financial losses of Fair Food and Market. So much damage caused by a few careless words.

We can’t beat this alone. CERES has always lived and died on the support of our community, so we’re asking you to tell your friends the real story, to share it through your networks. We’re asking you to stand by our farmers and our packers & drivers by placing your Fair Food orders and by shopping at CERES Market. We’re asking you to stand up for CERES.

A new documentary on the industrialised food system. We may have heard or read the issues before, but some nice close up examples of small scale intensive rural and urban sustainable agriculture (or permaculture/holistic management!):

Are the ‘burbs an unsustainable wasteland and best put in the ‘too hard basket? Or is there a way to make the suburbs sustainable? David Holmgren has got an answer and he is going to tell you about it at the Wheeler Centre on Feb 16.

In recent years, as we have become more aware of the negative effects of our high-impact lifestyles, a number of environmental responses have been introduced – such as increased insulation and energy-efficiency requirements for buildings, improvements to public transport, conservation of urban green space, and more water-sensitive urban design. At a personal level, a few individuals are also adapting by, taking in boarders, sharing backyards, or returning to the multi-generational family unit.

We have barely scratched the surface, however, of the profound improvements that the application of permaculture principles and strategies could deliver for the sustainability and livability of today’s suburbs.

David Holmgren, the co-founder of Permaculture, will explore how suburbs can, and are, responding to the converging economic, energy and climate crises. He will show how household and community resilience can be stimulated in the face of these pressures.